Category: Uncategorized

I’m of questionable consciousness right now — 8 p.m. has felt like 2 a.m. all week, and it’s 11:30 p.m. now — but I feel so guilty about not posting for two straight days that I’ll write anyway. (Plus, I’m on my again-functioning laptop, so I don’t have to do the touchtype-bob-and-weave on a Japanese keyboard. Seriously, who thought it was a good idea to put the @ where the ] should be [unshifted, even!], or the apostrophe at shift-7?)
Thursday morning: A visit to Osaka Castle, a “centuries-old” building that, like many “ancient” Japanese structures, has been rebuilt so many times that it’s tough to call it old. (Earthquakes and American bombing runs have eliminated most of the really old stuff over the years.) The castle’s interior is modern and pretty well done; my favorite part was a series of holograms telling the story of Toyotomi Hideyoshi‘s ascent to power. Really sophisticated holograms, but they were being projected into these little shoebox dioramas that looked like something a third grader might put together. (Plus, I couldn’t look at them without thinking: “Help me, Obi Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope.“)
Thursday afternoon: Drove to Kyoto, where we met with fellow journalists from the Kyoto Shimbun newspaper. When we met the three reporters we’d be talking with, I realized one reason I, as a rule, like reporters: we’re easy to pick out of a crowd. Put these three guys in a police lineup, and I could peg them not only as reporters, but as specific types of reporters. The guy in the suede jacket with the shaggy hair: theater critic. The rolled-up sleeves, intense look, tiny cell phone: financial reporter. The guy with the conservative suit, the earnest do-gooder look: city hall reporter. All nice folks. Actually, everyone I’ve met in the last week would fall in that “nice folks” category. There’s something to be said for a country where that’s the case.
Then it was off to Kiyomizu Temple, where three mini-waterfalls dispense water that will make you brilliant, handsome, or long-living, depending which one you drink. I drank none, which I suppose makes me dumb, ugly, and ready to keel over at any moment.
Did you know that in Japanese hotel rooms, instead of Gideon bibles, you get a book called The Teaching of Buddha? Did you also know that air conditioning here is more like, um, air suggestion? Climate hinting instead of climate control? I called the front desk at 1 a.m. when it was sweltering hot to ask if there was anything unusual I needed to do to get the AC to work properly. “Open a window,” came the reply.
Friday morning: Kyoto was the only major Japanese city that didn’t get turned to rubble by American bombs in World War II, and as a result it has more real historic sites than anywhere else in the country. (If you ever want your faith in the punitive power of American military might strengthened, just come to Tokyo and search for anything pre-1945. When we feel like unleashing hell, by gum, we do quite a job.) Kyoto was also Japan’s capital for 1,000 years — 72 emperors worth, plus a whole bunch of shoguns — and the result is old building overload. 1,600 Buddhist temples! 400 Shinto shrines!
It’s also the most popular tourist destination in Japan. (Actually, it was until two years ago, when horror of horrors, Tokyo Disneyworld passed it.) This fact, like many others, came from our tour guide, a compact little woman whose name I never got but who brought us from temple to temple to temple today with a Mussolini-like efficiency. Things I learned:
– Some Buddhist temples are in such need of cash for repairs that they’re converting upper floors to condos. Yep, condos. (Wonder if late-night chant sessions downstairs hurt those property values.)
– Shinto has a god of divorce; pray to him/her/it when that bad relationship just won’t end.
– Being called Benton-san is pretty damned cool. (Actually, I learned this on Day 1, at the airport.)
– The Japanese love Thomas Edison, because he once endorsed the use of Kyoto bamboo in building construction. The Japanese also love Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and sing it en masse every winter.
– The geisha industry is dying out because Japanese businessmen don’t have expense accounts like they used to. The average age of a Kyoto geisha: 62.
– Events marked on your itinerary as “kimono fashion show” are invariably less interesting than they seem, involving in this case five young models on the catwalk and eight bored tourists forming their “audience.”
After a while, Buddhist temples do start to blend together, like cathedral fatigue in Europe. But three buildings were quite nice. The Golden Pavilion was lovely (and swamped, like all of these places, by schoolchildren — Japanese schools seem to be on permanent field trips, judging by the presence of the wee ones everywhere you turn). It looks nice and ancient until you learn the whole place was built in 1958, eight years after a crazed apprentice monk took a torch to the original. When I heard that, I thought that’d make for a great opening scene for a book or a movie; as the link above shows, my brilliant idea has already been taken.
Nijo Castle was pretty amazing; it’s where the shoguns held court for centuries. The floors were specially rigged with springs that squeak when walked on, to warn the shogun of any approaching assassins. Unlike most old buildings, it’s actually the same structure that was built four hundred years ago — same wooden floors, same paintings on the walls, same everything. It’s also the place where the Meiji Restoration took place and the shogun transfered power back to the emperor in 1868; being five feet from the spot where the transfer took place was, to use inappropriate language, very cool. (Call me weird, but the fact that we had to take off our shoes in the building also made it seem strangely intimate — only my socks were between me and the floorboards the shogun once walked!)
Okay, I’m clearly getting delirious — I’ll shut up soon.
Finally, we went to Sanjusangendo Temple, which is the longest wooden structure in the world and is filled with more than 1,000 golden Buddhas. Quite overwhelming, really — it’s hard to describe, but that’s a lotta Buddha.
A couple of final highlights from Kyoto (which I highly recommend, by the way — it’s my favorite part of the trip so far): Kyoto Station, the train station downtown, is architecturally amazing. I have a very limited architectural vocabulary even when fully conscious — I usually start off saying something about how a building “creates interesting negative space” or some such nonsense, before descending into “it’s neat” — so I won’t try to tell you why, but poke around some photos of the concourse to see for yourself. (They

Today I became a reverse stereotype. Instead of Japanese tourists taking pictures of uninteresting things in America — a street sign, say — there I was this morning, standing at Tokyo Station, taking a photo of a train. (Like I’d never seen a train before.)
Anyway, that bullet train took us past Mt. Fuji and to Osaka, where we toured Sharp Corporation’s research and development facility. Learned more than I ever wanted to know about LCD manufacture. Also learned that Sharp was founded by the inventor of the mechanical pencil. (Hence the name.) Also learned from a company display that “The dream of a wall-mounted TV is now a reality.” I hadn’t realized that was one of the dreams, alongside a lasting global peace, that united all mankind. (In case you can’t tell, I’m actually [more than] a little cranky. For no good reason, really, other than irregular sleep.)
By the way, I think my Halloween costume — a traveling journalist tired of figuring out bizarre Japanese keyboards — turned out swimmingly.

On the front page of today’s Daily Yomiuri newspaper is a photo of a fan holding up a sign at Game 2 of the World Series, which Arizona pitcher Randy Johnson dominated over the Yankees: “It’ll take more than nine Yanks to beat our Johnson.” Apparently, the photo editors of Japan aren’t as keyed in to sexual double entendres as their American counterparts.
More meetings with important people today, one of whom I immediately fell in love with: Sakurako Tsuchiya, who is perhaps the only woman in Japan to own a sake brewing company, traditionally a very male dominated field. (Woman are not actually allowed to enter the brewing area of most breweries; they’re considered a “distraction.”) Anyway, she’s wonderfully headstrong, seems to be an excellent businesswoman — and cute and single! I’ve only got another week or so in this country, so I leave it to the men of Japan to find someone worthy of her…
It’s been interesting to meet with these VIPs; they all speak through interpreters, but you still find yourself nodding and smiling and gesturing in response to the things they say, even though you don’t have any idea what they’re saying. Don’t they say that communication is 90% nonverbal? This week has been proof.

Hitting the wall…jetlag kicking in…feeling sleepy…lengthy dinner party awaits…must not fall asleep during appetizers…

Some very quick thoughts before the 30 minutes of Internet access I’m paying for runs out:
– Business class was all I’d hoped it to be, although I still couldn’t sleep on the plane. (I’m a finicky sleeper, and no matter how many degrees of incline you get, sleeping on your side is still uncomfortable.) The only problem: too much food. I think I ate 9 meals in a 36-hour period. (Mmmm…Dove bars.)
– There is no less flattering light than the light in an airplane’s bathroom. I looked like an extra from some never-before-aired Star Trek episode. (More so than usual.)
– Watched “Vertigo” on the plane and was strangely disappointed. I like Hitchcock, and I’d always heard “Vertigo” held up as one of his peaks. But it seemed a bit too hamfisted, Kim Novak was awful, and even the Bernard Herrmann soundtrack was only so-so. It did help me better understand the Harvey Danger song “Carlotta Valdez,” however. (P.S. A.J. Hammer, ex-VJ on VH1, now has the job of introducing movies on Northwest flights. Not sure if that’s a promotion or not.)
– Good music to listen to on a 12-hour plane ride: Roni Size/Reprazent, New Forms; A Tribe Callled Quest, Anthology, Dismemberment Plan, Change. Not as good for plane rides, although still a great album: Tindersticks, Tindersticks (too whispery for all the plane noise).
– People who keep opening a window shade during the sleep portion of a lengthy plane ride should be immediately thrown off the flight. Hint: it still looks like a bunch of clouds out there. You don’t have to look to confirm it.
– Naturally, my laptop broke the first time I tried to use it. Gotta love toting around 15 pounds of dead weight for the next 12 days.
– Japan seems…well, I haven’t seen enough of it to say yet. I’ll get back to you on that.

Reason #3,672,102 why I love my grandmother: She just called me in Japan to tell me the Saints beat the Rams. We have a tradition every week after the game: I call her and explain what happened. (She has a vague idea when something good or bad happens, based on how the crowd reacts, but beyond that, she’s a bit fuzzy.) But this week, she knew enough to know that beating a 6-0 team on the road is a big deal.

Service truly is Job #1 at crabwalk.com! Here I am, enjoying the ambiance of Minneapolis/St. Paul, and I still find time to post for my beloved readers. Since being in an airport invariably means being surrounded by copies of USA Today, I’ve decided to write this entry in the dot-dot-dot style of Larry King’s late, lamented column for that fine McPaper.
John Stamos is on the cover of Biography Magazine. Alert my good friend Jerry Falwell, because the end times are a-comin’…First-class airline tickets are overrated. When I ask for a pillow, damn it, I want a pillow, not some namby-pamby excuse about being all out. This is first-class, baby! Shouldn’t they have a seamstress on duty, ready to make a new pillow from the stewardesses’ locks of hair if necessary?…If there are a better people than the Hmong minority of the Upper Midwest, friend, I haven’t met them…Jonathan Winters is such a talent — and you wouldn’t believe the work that man does for charity, unnoticed…Minneapolis and St. Paul have to rank up there with the great Twin Cities of all time. But for my money, the Schenectady-Albany-Troy tri-cities area is still the tops, baby…Surprising news: it’s cold in Minnesota in late October!…Marlon Brando is a surprisingly good kisser…

(And for those of you who haven’t yet seen me in person, Mr. Stock Photo above is not me. The short sleeves with tie look — also known as The Burger King Assistant Manager — has never been my thing.)

Thanks to increased security, I leave for the airport in less than two hours: 4:40 a.m., to be precise. I finished packing a few minutes ago, only to realize that I forgot to pack any socks. (Socks aren’t essential, per se, but they’re a valued part of my wardrobe.) So now it’s time for the traditional pre-trip panic of what-did-I-forget. As long as I’ve got my passport and my tickets, I suppose I’m okay.
I’m staying up all night, primarily because I’ve had lots of last-minute things to do, secondarily because I hope it’ll get my body clock on Japan time. The downside: I might be asleep when one or more of the famous first-class/business-class perks comes rolling down the aisle. “Godiva chocolates, sir?” “Would you like your left or right foot massaged first?” “To whom should I make the check out to, sir?” Wouldn’t want to miss any of those. Hopefully, I’ll be bloggin’ atcha again in 24 hours or so.

I’ve got a scoop for you all: Dallas has been eliminated from the race for the 2012 Olympics. crabwalk.com is proud to be the first web site to report this breaking news. We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.